TV Medical Doctor Christian Jessen Faces Bankruptcy Over £125k Libel Bill For Tweeting false allegations Against Arlene Foster

 

Celebrity health practitioner Christian Jessen has stated he is going through financial ruin after being ordered to pay Arlene Foster £125,000 in libel damages.

The TV host is asking his followers to assist him elevate cash to cowl his prison charges after Northern Ireland’s First Minister took him to court docket for tweeting false allegations that she was once having an extra-marital affair.

Dr Jessen, 44, who seems on Channel 4’s Embarrassing Bodies, stated he solely has £20,000 to his identify and can't pay for an enchantment barring crowd-funding.

He stated his intellectual fitness is ‘cracking’ after a decide at the High Court in Belfast dominated closing week that the tweet, posted in 2019, was once ‘grossly defamatory’.

Mrs Foster, former chief of the DUP, stated it had brought on her ‘grave upset, distress, embarrassment and humiliation’.

Dr Jessen has raised greater than £4,900 on a Go Fund Me web page however confronted a backlash on Twitter after asking for help. He is asking for £150,000 in whole and has stated he will donate any surplus to charity. His felony fees, must he appeal, are probable to complete £300,000.

‘Obviously, I deeply feel sorry about it, and if Arlene Foster says the declare in the tweet isn’t true, then I’m sorry for inflicting her any hurt,’ he said. ‘But I don’t agree with the judgment. I’d been brutally trustworthy about my intellectual fitness in courtroom and the situations that led to the tweet, and for that to be disregarded is without a doubt concerning.

‘I couldn’t get collectively all my scientific proof of my depression. I have spent the final 12 months dwelling with my dad and mom and no longer working due to the Covid pandemic and no longer having been in a in shape intellectual state. It used to be simply a dull tweet.’

Dr Jessen continued: ‘I’m down to my final £20,000 and that won’t closing long. I don’t have the cash so if the crowd-funding doesn’t work, I may additionally have to declare myself bankrupt. It’s needless to say now not helped my intellectual fitness in any way at all and whilst I’m preserving afloat at the second I can experience it cracking.’

He added: ‘Being homosexual I’ve taken a lot of hobby in the DUP stances on problems such as same-sex marriage – that is why I’ve been conscious of Arlene Foster for a lengthy time.’

In court, Judge Gerry McAlinden described the tweet as ‘an outrageous libel regarding an person of big standing.’

It attacked Mrs Foster’s ‘integrity at the most essential level’ and worried the ‘trashing in a very public trend of the relationship that Ms Foster holds dearest in her life’.

Despite the growing donations, Dr Jessen’s tweet provoked a backlash on Twitter. ‘You have carried out the crime however prefer each person else to pay for your “time” wow,’ one of his followers wrote.